


This Will Always Have Happened

by dance_across



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Existential Angst, F/M, Hugs, Kissing, Memory Alteration, POV Thirteen, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Still Mad About Donna, Ten Has Chemistry With Everything, Thirteen Has No Idea What Her Sexuality Is, Timey-Wimey Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_across/pseuds/dance_across
Summary: She can’t tell him. She can’t risk the memory bleeding through and infecting his timeline with knowledge he shouldn’t have yet. But it’s becoming more and more impossible to stand here and say nothing.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Thirteenth Doctor
Comments: 10
Kudos: 86





	This Will Always Have Happened

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is what happens when you rewatch season 4 while season 12 is airing. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Even before she opens the door, the Doctor knows she’s in the wrong place. There’s a gut feeling, or the flavor of the landing is slightly off. Something.

“Shall we try again, then?” she asks quietly, tapping the console. “Or are you doing this on purpose? Are you angry with me? I didn’t mean to steal you—honestly, I didn’t—it’s only that I didn’t have much of a choice.”

The TARDIS doesn’t reply. Not like her own TARDIS would. There’s no creak of the floor, no little whine of the engines, no telepathic nudge that points her mind in the right direction. Nothing.

She isn’t used to so much nothing.

Still, she’s been brought _somewhere,_ and even today, even with everything that’s happened and everything that she’s learned, she can’t bring herself not to open the door.

“Just a peek outside,” she tells herself. “Right, Doctor? Yes! Right. Just a peek, just to see.”

She opens the door. She steps out of the newly-stolen TARDIS. And then—

_BOOM._

She doesn’t hear it so much as feel it. Deep in her bones, setting her hearts racing. Something gratingly, annoyingly wrong. Like when you get spinach caught in your teeth, except instead of your teeth it’s the _whole universe,_ and instead of spinach it’s…

Well. That’s the question, isn’t it.

It’s a familiar feeling, this, but she can’t place it. The answer’s there, in her head, but it keeps slipping just out of reach, like a dream that fades on waking.

A quick look around tells her that she’s on Earth, but not the far-future Earth where she left her own TARDIS. This looks like the twenty-first century. And a quick sniff confirms that she’s in London.

It’s a busy street she’s landed on, but everyone else is just going about their business. Talking on phones. Carrying shopping bags. Walking dogs.

And yet, the _BOOM_ keeps on keeping on. Reverberating inside her, like an echo, or a drumbeat. No, not that. It’s more specific than that. It’s more like… like something’s trying to pull her, _lure_ her, toward… what?

Well. Only one way to find out.

“I’ll be right back,” she tells the TARDIS that isn’t hers. And she feels for a direction, and she runs.

Down the street, through an intersection, never mind the cars and their horns, further down, _ah yes,_ a left turn just here, then another left, and here’s a promising alley, nip around the bins, and—

_BOOM._

This time, it’s physical. On account of how she’s just run headlong into another person. There’s a tangle of limbs, a flailing for balance, a lot of “Sorry!” in her own voice and “Sorry!” in a man’s voice, and she’s got him by the shoulder and he’s got her by the sleeve, each steadying the other, and then she looks up.

Into the face of a person who, once upon a time, was her.

_Boom,_ she thinks.

“Sorry, hello,” he says. “Sorry!”

“Oh,” she says. “Brilliant.”

“Thank you!” says her younger self. “I mean what? What’s brilliant? Who are you?”

He’s all dapper brown suit and big brown eyes and giant sticky-uppy brown hair. The sheer amount of gel she used to put in that hair, back when she was him. The sight of it is the most perfect distraction from the day she’s had; she actually claps her hands in delight.

“Never mind me, look at _you!”_ she says. “You, in the flesh! But how—? No, never mind how. It’s really you!”

He looks sort of flattered, but also sort of not. Nevertheless, he replies, “Really me. And you are?”

“A fan, a big fan,” she says, reaching for his hand. He lets her take it, and they shake. She’s _shaking her own hand!_ How marvelous.

“And you heard the sonic boom, thought I might be nearby, and came running, did you?” he asks.

The words _not a sonic boom_ are on the tip of her tongue, followed by an explanation. Oh, it’s only a rip in the fabric of time, no matter, it’ll seal itself up once I get out of my past self’s timeline, easy peasy, oh and by the way did I mention I’m you?

But she doesn’t say any of that.

She can’t.

And she isn’t sure why. Maybe she’s intrigued by how easily he believed, just now, that she was just another human, tracking him down. Maybe she needs a little mischief, after the Matrix and Tecteun and the Timeless Child, after losing Gallifrey again and losing the Master again and almost dying again and… and…

Maybe it’s darker than that, more vindictive, this impulse she’s having. Maybe she wants to be the one who knows the truth of things, this time, and maybe she wants to watch someone else flounder in the dark. Even if that someone else is just another version of her.

No, _especially_ if it’s another version of her. This way she’s not tricking anyone else. She’s not doing to anyone else what the Master did to her. She’s paying it forward, but not really. She’s keeping it in the family, as it were. 

That is what she tells herself as she says, “That’s right. Heard the boom and came running. That’s just what I did.”

He eyes her, equal parts curious and suspicious. “Nobody else came running. Did you notice? How nobody else seems to have heard it at all?”

“I did notice,” she says, trying to put a bit of astonishment into her voice. “Wonder why we’re the only ones.”

He peers at her. She can feel the full weight of his attention on her, and his attention is a weighty thing indeed. He asks, “What’s your name?”

“J—” The Doctor cuts herself off just in time, lingering on the sound as she thinks. Her first impulse is still to say _John Smith,_ but she obviously can’t do that this time around. For at least two reasons.

“…Jessica?” she says instead, her voice coming out more tentative than she’d like. But that’s good, right? That’s a reasonable name that a human being of her age and gender and appearance might have, right? She thinks it is. “Jessica,” she repeats, more firmly this time. And then adds, because she can’t help herself, “Smith.”

The other one, her previous self, Brown Suit—he smiles at that. “Smith! Love that. Always did have a soft spot for people called Smith.” She comes _this close_ to breathing easier, except then his face goes suspicious again. “Hold on, are you making that up because you _know_ I’ve got a soft spot for people called Smith?”

“How would I know that?” the Doctor says innocently.

“Well, you said you’ve… Wait. Hold on hold on hold on, are you one of those LINDA people? S’that how you know who I am?”

LINDA, right, she remembers them. It was years ago for her, now. Centuries. Well-meaning little group of investigators, poking into her life, until they got infiltrated by an alien and most of them died horribly. She still feels sad, from time to time, about the ones that died horribly.

“No,” she says carefully. “I’m not… I’m… I’m with their sister group. We’re based up in Sheffield. We’re called LAURA.”

Amusement wars with suspicion, now, on Brown Suit’s face. “LAURA. And what’s that stand for?”

Oh, she walked right into that one.

She thinks fast. Very fast.

“We’re the League of Appreciating and Understanding Real Aliens.”

Brown Suit’s mouth twitches. She really didn’t know, back when she was him, what a very expressive mouth she had. Or did she know? It’s been a long time.

“I didn’t name it,” she can’t help adding, even though she absolutely did, about eight seconds ago. But it turns out that eight seconds is exactly enough time to realize how silly a thing sounds once you’ve said it.

“Well,” says Brown Suit. The word manages, somehow, to be all tongue. “Jessica Smith of LAURA of Sheffield. If you’re interested in understanding real aliens, what would you say to doing some investigating with me?”

Which is when the Doctor notices something that, amidst all her reasoning and strategizing and trying to come up with acronyms, she failed to notice before.

“You haven’t got anyone to go investigating with already?”

That suspicion again. “Were you expecting me to?”

She tries to place him—tries to fit him into her memory of her own timeline. Surely he’s already lost Rose; if she were still in this universe, they’d be joined at the hip. Plus he’s got all those frown lines, all that distrust. He wouldn’t have those things, she thinks, if Rose were still around.

Has he traveled with Martha yet? Or Donna? Has he tried and failed to save Adelaide, has he watched Astrid turn to stardust, has he been to the Library? Has he met the Master again, cried over his death, not yet knowing that, as ever, it wouldn’t stick? Has he—

Oh. The Master.

She knows exactly where she is in his timeline. Not only that, she knows exactly why. This TARDIS, the one that brought her here—it must’ve decided to ignore the coordinates she programmed in, and skim her thoughts instead, and what would it find there?

The Master, the Master, the Master.

She’s just lost him again. So has Brown Suit. And she wants desperately to say something, but… no, she can’t. Not yet.

So instead, she shrugs. “Dunno. It’s just, in all the photos, there’s usually someone with you.”

A tight smile tugs at his mouth. “Suppose there is. But no, not now. Just me.” A pause, full of trepidation that she can’t quite parse. “And you. If you like.”

“I would,” she says. “I’d like that very much.”

He gives her a quick once-over, mouth pursed at first, then twitching into a bright smile. “Love the earring,” he tells her. “Now come on!”

He breaks into a run, down the alley, back the way she came. The Doctor follows.

-

The Doctor has met herself before, though this is the first time meeting a previous version of herself while wearing this particular face. And it nearly always happens like this: a sense of impending catastrophe, a sense of disorienting familiarity, and then the realization: _Oh, it’s only me. That’s fine._

And then the second realization: _Oh, it’s_ me. _That’s definitely_ not _fine._

And then the moment when her younger self is convinced, and then an adventure with definitely some problem-solving and maybe some almost-dying, and then it’s over. Her older self will get to remember, while her younger self will tuck the memory away like a mostly-forgotten dream.

And it always goes by so very, very quickly.

She remembers, vaguely, that she’s had the impulse to make it last before. To be the older version of herself, drawing out the mystery for her younger self. But she’s never been able to contain her excitement—the jumping up and down and hugging and comparing sonics and going _You’re me! I’m you! This definitely isn’t supposed to happen, but how wonderful!_

Until now.

Except this isn’t how she ever pictured it going. She’s not drawing out a mystery; she’s hoarding information so he can’t have it. She’s not containing her excitement; she’s so exhausted that she barely has any excitement to contain.

Oh sure, there’s the adrenaline rush that comes with running, as there always is, and that’s quite nice—but no matter how fast she runs, there’s the Matrix, the Master, all those memories, nipping at her heels.

“It’s over this way!” Brown Suit calls, gesturing wildly. They’ve just made a right, and another right, and there’s a big intersection coming up, and—oh, they’re heading back in the direction she came from, aren’t they?

Back toward her TARDIS. Of course. He felt the same thing she did, the thing that wasn’t a sonic boom, and he followed it back to its source. Just like she did.

She sighs. Apparently the charade can’t last forever.

Except once they’ve crossed the intersection—both of them dodging cars, him nearly getting run over in the process—and gone back up the road she came from, and reached the spot at the stone wall where she left her TARDIS…

Well, _she_ can see it. It’s disguised itself as a gate, padlocked and rusty. But he’s hardly expecting to encounter a TARDIS with a working chameleon circuit, is he.

“I thought there’d be…” Brown Suit scrunches up his face as he looks around, seeing what he’s missed.

“Thought there’d be what?” asks the Doctor. She starts looking around, too. “What are we looking for?”

“The thing, the thing, the source of the thing!” says Brown Suit. “The trail ends here, and it’s _strong,_ and it’s definitely alien, and I can almost _taste_ it, it’s on the tip of my…”

He runs his tongue hungrily over his bottom lip, and she can practically feel him yearning to lick something.

She remembers this about being him. God, the things she licked, back when she was him.

“Taste what?” she asks, still trying her best to look like a confused human. “There’s nothing here.”

“I’ve felt it before,” says Brown Suit, like he hasn’t even heard. “It’s… it’s… hold on.”

He turns toward her.

She stands there, wide-eyed. “What?”

He moves toward her. He _sniffs._ Which is almost as weird as the licking, at least when you’re on the receiving end of it.

“The trail was clear,” he says. “And then I bumped into you—literally, bumped!—and then when we started following it together, it got a bit… muddy. I thought it was my head acting muddy because I was trying to follow the trail and talk to you at the same time, but…”

“But?” she says, breathless with anticipation. She wants him to figure it out. She wants him to _never_ figure it out. She wants this to be over; she wants to run.

He steps closer. He is very much in her personal space. “Have you done anything out of the ordinary lately?” he asks, with narrowed eyes.

It’s all she can do not to laugh in his face.

“I… how do you mean?” she manages.

“Eaten a plant you don’t recognize. Had a drink with an odd shimmer to it. Let an alien breathe on you.”

“You mean aside from right now?” she blurts out, before she can stop herself.

He blinks. The corner of his mouth twitches. His hair really is _quite_ sticky-uppy.

“Yes,” he says, “aside from now.”

“Well, I’m not sure, honestly, I…” She feigns a small gasp. “Wait. Why do you ask? Are you saying that it’s _me_ you were looking for?”

He sniffs her again. It’s just as weird the second time around.

“Not you,” he says. “Something inside you. Something alien that’s taken root in your body. I can’t quite tell what it is, but…”

He trails off, and of course he can’t tell what it is. Of course there’s a reason for the frustrated look on his face. What he’s sensing is the presence of another Time Lord, but his mind is doing its best to hide it from him, because she’s crossed his time stream and he’s the younger of the two of them, which means he can still walk away without ever knowing.

His mind is trying to write over the experience, even as it’s happening. Oh, she can’t keep doing this. She has to tell him.

But then he’s taking hold of her face, two strong hands cupping her jaw, and he’s saying, “You’ll thank me for this. I’m saving your life.”

And then he’s kissing her. Because _of course_ he’s kissing her. This was practically his way of introducing himself, back then.

But although her brain knows that perfectly well—finds it funny, even—her body reacts quite differently. It’s so new, this body. She’s still learning what it likes, what it doesn’t. And so the Doctor finds herself quite surprised when her body stiffens, almost _recoils,_ at being so suddenly and intimately touched.

The only reason that she doesn’t shove him away and tell him in no uncertain terms to keep his hands to himself, sir, thank you _very_ much, is… well, it’s that he’s her. He’s who she used to be. He goes around sniffing and licking everything and everyone he can find, he hugs whenever he has the chance, he kisses anything with a mouth. Everything he feels is right there on the surface of him, and how does he bear it? How did she bear being so open, back then?

The Doctor lets herself be kissed; it’s damp, and the feel of his lips is strange, and she’s not quite sure how to respond, and so she just… doesn’t.

Then, she feels him inhaling, as though he’s trying to pull something out from the depths of her.

He pulls away, looking sort of dazed. To be honest, the Doctor feels sort of dazed, too. And for a moment, they just look at each other.

They just look.

Does he know? He must know by now.

But then his face crumples, and, “It didn’t work,” he says. His voice has taken on sort of a desperate edge. “Whatever’s inside you, it’s too deep for me to reach. I’ll think of something, though, don’t worry.”

“Doctor—”

“No, just let me think, let me think,” he says, beginning to pace. He looks so alone all of a sudden. No Rose to hug him to calmness, no Martha to remind him to think logically, no Donna to slap him out of whatever mood he’s spiraling into.

“Doctor?” she tries again.

“I can _do_ this,” he snaps. “I can save you. I just need… I need…”

She remembers this version of herself. The building desperation she can hear in his voice? She remembers feeling it. She remembers running as fast as she could, thinking that if she could just save one more life, avoid one more apocalypse, it would have been worth it. The loss of Rose would have been worth it.

Everything was about Rose, back when she lived in this body. Everything.

“Doctor,” she says. “Stop.”

He stops. Looks at her.

She says, “You don’t have to save me. I’ll be fine. We’ll be just fine.”

He blinks at her.

She goes to him. Reaches out and takes one of his hands in both of hers. “I should’ve told you as soon as we met. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“Tell me…” He swallows. “Tell me what?”

She looks up at him. “I’ve been meeting myself a lot, lately. Didn’t know it would happen again so soon.”

And there’s a comfort, she realizes, in meeting herself and _recognizing_ herself. She thinks of Ruth, of all those faces in the Matrix, and realizes just how badly she needed to see a version of herself that she already knew.

His eyes are round as moons. “Wait, so you’re…”

She nods.

His gaze moves upward, just a tick. Lands on her hair. “And I’m…”

She laughs. “Still not ginger.”

-

White light plays over his face as he stalks around the console, squinting at anything he doesn’t recognize, which is… well, mostly everything. The Doctor, standing a few paces back with her arms wrapped protectively around her torso, watches him closely. Watches his hands closely, to be precise. Because while they might be safely stowed in his pockets at the moment, any second he’ll—

“No button-pressing!” she says, as one slender hand snakes out of his pocket and darts toward a tantalizingly bright blue button. Good job there doesn’t seem to be a big red one.

His hand freezes, just inches away from the console, and then he withdraws it with a laugh. “Sorry. Habit.” Backing away from the temptation of all the buttons and dials and levers, he does a slow spin, taking in the full expanse of the room. “Interesting redesign. Very classic. Back to basics, eh?”

He doesn’t know. He can’t tell. She can’t tell him. She bites her tongue and stays quiet.

“What’s this one do?” he asks, fingers hovering inches away from a small lever patterned with little crystalline stars.

“No idea,” she says.

“May I just…” His hand makes a vague stroking motion, which she understands completely.

“Go ahead,” she tells him.

And so he touches the console. “Hello there, old friend.” His face is as tender as his voice when he speaks—but then his brows come together. She knows why. She can feel the TARDIS’s lack of response to him. It may have slithered into her mind just enough to know to bring her here, but it wasn’t out of familiarity. It was just doing what TARDISes sometimes do when they’re feeling a bit feisty.

“She’s not—” Brown Suit whirls on the Doctor. “Where’d you get her? How? Whose is she?”

She winces. “I may have borrowed—”

“From _who?”_

But her mind is already on the implications of _borrowed._ Borrowed means an intention to return—an _ability_ to return. And where would she return it to, now?

“Stolen,” she amends. “I may have stolen it.”

“Stolen it from who?” he asks again.

“Oh, come on, you just met the Master again, didn’t you? So you know you’re not the only one left,” she says. “You met him, you lost him. Harold Saxon and the Year That Never Was, and Martha walking the earth, and poor Lucy, and Jack being killed over and over again, just for fun, just for—”

Her breath catches in her throat when she thinks about it. The Master holding Jack Harkness in chains, killing him every time the mood struck, every time he needed, or wanted—

She snaps her eyes closed, and the images flood her mind again, just as clear as if she were back there—back in the Matrix. A child sitting in a medical facility, then another child, then another. All of them the same. All of them her. Regeneration after regeneration, just because that woman needed, or wanted—

“Oh, Jack,” she whispers.

And when she opens her eyes again, Brown Suit is gazing at her, shrewd, calculating. His impossibly kinetic body has gone still. “Did something happen to Jack?”

She gives him a weak smile. “Something’s always happened to Jack.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” she says. “And you know I can’t tell you.”

“Mm,” he says, mouth twisting sourly.

“You know I can’t.”

He runs another finger over the console, then leans against it, almost sitting. “The Year That Never Was—it’s been a while, for me,” he says.

She frowns. If that’s true, then she was wrong about his timeline. But, if not because of the Master, then why did this TARDIS bring her here?

“What made you assume?” he continues. Then, after a second: “Ah. You’ve met him again, haven’t you. He survived. Again.”

“Might have done,” she says.

“You can tell me little things,” he says. “I won’t remember them. Time streams and all.”

_You remember being me, watching you, doing that._ It’s been centuries, but she still hears her fifth self’s voice, clear as day. And he was right.

“There’s never a guarantee,” she tells him. “Some of it bleeds through sometimes. You know that.”

“Little things, though.”

Her arms are still clutched around herself. She doesn’t know why. But now that she’s noticing, she makes herself loosen, just a little. Makes herself let go. Arms by her sides again, she says, “He was ex-MI6, this time, instead of Prime Minister.”

“Ahhh, course he was,” he says, running a hand through that sticky-uppy hair of his. She remembers doing that. So clearly. It makes her smile, despite everything.

“Where are you, then?” she asks. “If the Year That Never Was happened so long ago, then…”

“Earth got stolen, I brought it back!” says Brown Suit. “Davros, of all people, can you believe—No, of course you can. Anyway, me and the whole gang, we all…” His face dims. “Anyway, they’re all gone now. Rose, back to her parallel world with her… me. The other me. Sarah Jane, Martha, Jack, back to saving the Earth when I’m not around. Donna, back to…”

His lips go thin, and he tucks his chin, looking suddenly like he’s about to cry, and—

Oh.

She knows.

“Donna,” she breathes. Because she knows, now, why the TARDIS chose this place, this time, to drop her off.

“I had to,” says Brown Suit, teeth clenched, the words so staccato that they hurt. “You know. You were there. You were me. You know I didn’t have a choice.”

She can only stare at him. She does know. She was there. She was him. And she remembers putting her hands on Donna’s temples, ripping away memory after memory as Donna said _no, no,_ over and over, as she begged, as she cried, as—

“She told you not to,” the Doctor says.

Brown Suit glares. “I didn’t have a—”

“She said _no.”_ And before she realizes what she’s doing, the Doctor is lunging at him, shoving him against the console, pinning him there with her hand on his shoulders. “Over and over, she said no, and you could have… you could have…”

She realizes, with no small measure of horror, that her vision is blurry. One of her cheeks is wet. Has she cried yet in this body? She can’t remember. She doesn’t think so.

Kissing. Crying. Learning that she was made to regenerate over and over again as a child. Lots of firsts today.

“I couldn’t,” he says softly, using the voice he always uses when he’s trying to appease someone.

Rage rises inside her. She hates being the kind of person who needs appeasing.

“You could,” she says. “You could have listened to her. You could have taken a few more minutes to try to convince her, instead of just reaching in and—”

“She was burning up!” Brown Suit says. “She didn’t have a few minutes!”

“A few _seconds,”_ she insists. “Or you could’ve done what you did, then gone out and figured out how to reverse it. But you won’t. I know you won’t do it because I didn’t do it, and I kept on not doing it until it became fixed in time. And I’ll never forgive myself for that. Not ever.”

“It can’t be reversed,” he says, oh so calmly.

“It could be,” she says. “Rose can absorb the entire Time Vortex and come out of it just fine, but Donna—brilliant, wonderful Donna Noble—can’t handle the consciousness of one stupid little Time Lord?”

“She—”

“Those were her memories. _Hers._ She was entitled to keep them. She had the _right_ to keep them. She had the right to know how brilliant she was, how important, how compassionate, how…” The Doctor takes a deep breath. “She had the right to know her own life. And you took it from her. You just took it away. How could you take it away? How could I…”

Her eyes squeeze shut again, and behind her lids are brilliant Noor Inayat Khan, cunning Ada Lovelace, their minds also wiped by her hand. Those amazing women. How could she?

Then his voice is saying, “I know, I know,” and he’s prying himself loose from her grasp, and then there are arms around her, thin and strong. A chin rests on her shoulder. The chin that belongs to the face that she used to think of as her tenth.

How many faces has she worn, though? How many did she see in the Matrix—and how many were skipped over or erased?

Was the first face she saw there really the first she ever had? Was the cliff the first time she ever died?

How many times?

“No, you don’t know,” she says softly into his ear, as he holds her. She is stiff in his arms; she is not good at being held, not in this body. “You will. But you don’t yet.”

His grip on her loosens, and she finds herself being held at arm’s length. Brown Suit’s eyes are wide and worried, and his hands on her elbows are loose but firm. He says, simply, “Tell me. Please. What happened?”

She can’t tell him. She can’t risk the memory bleeding through and infecting his timeline with knowledge he shouldn’t have yet. But it’s becoming more and more impossible to stand here and say nothing.

“Something was taken from me,” she says slowly. “From us. Something important. You don’t even know to look for it, because you don’t know it’s missing.”

“What?” he says, confused. “What is it? Who took it? Have you got it back, or…?”

She smiles. He’ll figure it out.

His eyes widen. “A memory. That’s it, isn’t it.”

She nods.

“What memory?” he asks. “What’s worse than—”

He cuts himself off, swallowing hard, and for a flash of a moment she sees Gallifrey burning, just behind his eyes. He doesn’t know yet that it’s been saved.

Only to burn again.

“What have we done?” he asks quietly.

“It’s not like that,” she says.

She wants to leave it there, but everything she saw in the Matrix is expanding against the confines of her body, pushing its way up her throat and against her teeth, clamoring to get out. She can’t bear this alone. How dare the Master make her bear this alone?

“Tell me,” says Brown Suit.

“What if you remember?” she asks.

“Do _you_ remember this conversation, from when you were me?” he counters with an arched brow. “If I’m _going_ to remember, then you must already remember.”

“I don’t,” she says. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. This moment is in flux. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

His mouth thins, and he gives a curt nod. “I can.”

“Then my question stands. What if you remember?”

“Then I remember,” he says with a shrug. “I remember, and then this conversation has always happened, and oops, we’ve rewritten our own timeline. Bit of a hole in the fabric of reality, but when’s that ever stopped us before?”

“Loads of times,” she says, biting back a laugh.

“Tell me,” he says, squeezing her shoulders. “Because you look like you’re being eaten up inside. Doctor. Tell me.”

Maybe it’s the sound of his voice, calling her by her name. Maybe it’s that he’s right. Or maybe it’s just that she can’t hold back any longer. But whatever the reason, she finds herself saying, “We’re not who we think we are.”

His grip on her loosens, but he doesn’t let go. His brow furrows, and he waits silently for her to go on.

“We’re not from Gallifrey. We’re probably not even from this universe.” And from there, the words come pouring out of her. All of it—Tecteun and the Boundary and the fall and the regeneration and the experiments. “There were these children, these… these versions of me. Of us. Different faces. So many of them. She made them regenerate so she could isolate the—”

“Hold on, _made_ them regenerate?” he says.

The Doctor nods. Waits for him to draw the only possible conclusion, and to say it aloud. So she doesn’t have to.

“She killed them, then. She killed her own child, just to trigger a regeneration.”

There it is. The thing the Doctor wouldn’t allow herself to look at directly. She didn’t have time to think about the implication of all those regenerations when she was caught in the Matrix, but now…

Brown Suit lets the Doctor go, freeing up his hands so he can run them over his face. That elastic, expressive face of his—the Doctor watches it keenly, noting every detail of how he reacts.

And maybe this is why she needed, so badly, to tell him. She needed to see how he processes all this new information because… well, because then maybe she’ll know how, too. She hasn’t yet. She hasn’t had _time._ Oh, sure, she told the Master that she was _so much more_ now, and even threw in a little Whitman for good measure, but that was just a speech. Speeches are what you _do_ when your worst friend—your best enemy—decides to destroy the universe yet again, and you’re the one who has to stop him.

No time to think. Just make a plan, make a speech, and make a clean getaway.

“There’s more,” she says.

He nods, and she goes on. She tells him everything: how the Time Lords came to be, what little she saw of the Division, the fragments of human-looking false memory that overlaid most of it, the bits that were redacted. The most surprising part of it all is how calm she feels, as she tells it.

Maybe if the memories were properly hers, she wouldn’t feel so calm—but they’re not. It’s not like watching Brown Suit over there, listening. Every reaction he has—every twitch of his eyebrows, every adjustment of his posture—their echoes still live in her body. Proper memories, even centuries after she was him. But the story she’s telling him? It still feels like just a story.

She hates, she _hates,_ that so much of her own life feels like just a story.

“And how did you learn all this?” he asks quietly, when she brings the story to its end.

“The Master,” she says simply.

His eyebrows shoot up. “He told you, and you believed him?”

“He… had proof,” she says. No need to go into the how and the when and the why. “So, yes. I believed him.”

He runs a hand through his hair again, looking utterly shell-shocked. “And how long before I learn it too?”

A small smile tugs at her mouth. “A long time.”

“I’m glad,” he says, then seems surprised to have said it. “Is it weird that I’m glad? All that, I don’t know that I could manage to…” He flutters his lips loudly, then shakes out his hands. All these anxious little gestures—they’re strangely gratifying to watch.

“I know,” she says, feeling very still by comparison.

“What are we, then?” he says. “Where did we come from?”

She shrugs. “Dunno.”

“Ahh. A mystery.”

She nods, tight-lipped. “S’pose so.”

His gaze turns shrewd. “Unless it’s a mystery you don’t want to solve?”

“Nah, who, me?” she says. “You know me better than that. I love a mystery! Never met a mystery I didn’t want to solve!”

“Never, eh,” he says, watching her closely.

She takes a moment. Thinks about it. Really thinks. And finally settles on, “I _should_ want to solve it. And it’s not that I don’t, not exactly, it’s just…”

“You’re scared,” he says, taking a tentative step toward her again.

Her throat feels thick. There’s a pricking at her eyes again.

“Terrified,” she says.

This time, when he moves toward her and folds her into his arms, she lets go. Sags against him like a rag doll, letting him hold a little of her weight. The weight of her body, the weight of her mind—it’s nice to share it with someone else for a moment. Even if that someone else is only herself, in the end.

He presses his cheek into her hair, and she buries her nose in his coat. No, this body isn’t good at being held, but if she puts her mind to it—

No. The opposite. If she lets herself _relax_ into it, the way relaxing into someone else always came so naturally to this past self of hers…

She closes her eyes and breathes in the scent of his coat. The scent of her own past, the one she actually knows and remembers.

A hand touches her hair, ever so lightly, and she leans into it, and it’s good. It’s actually so good, being touched with such care.

“Will you be all right?” he asks after a moment. “Do you have anyone to… anyone you’re traveling with?”

“We got separated,” she says, and pulls back a little when she realizes his coat is muffling her voice. “I was on my way to find them again, and ended up here instead.”

He smiles gently, brown eyes shining. “Will you tell them?”

She bites her lip.

“You should,” he says.

She thinks of her little fam, and how they worry about her. How they ask her questions upon questions upon questions, and how she deflects every chance she gets. It’s something about this new body. Something about its instincts. It doesn’t like closeness, not the way some of her others have. Not the way Brown Suit likes it.

But he’s right. She should try.

“I will,” she says with a nod. Then frowns. “Still not sure I should’ve told _you,_ though.”

“Oh, you definitely shouldn’t have!” he says with a laugh. “That was a doozy. Do people still say that? Doozy. Doozy.” He rolls the word around in his mouth, trying out different shapes and sizes of it.

“Doctor.”

“Sorry,” he says. “But it’ll be fine. Just a little rip, as we said. And that’s if I do remember. I probably won’t.”

That grin of his. As he shines it on her with only inches between them, the reality of what she’s just done settles in her gut. He’s right; he probably won’t remember.

But if he does?

“We shouldn’t take that chance,” she says softly. His grin starts to dim, and she goes on: “It might be just a little rip, but it would rewrite my whole life. I can’t have that happen. Not again.”

She watches him realize what she means; watches as he exhales, slowly. Then as he nods. Just once.

“I don’t want to,” she says. As if that means anything at all. She didn’t want to with Donna, either.

“But you have to,” he says, sort of flatly. “Just in case.”

She nods. “I’m sorry. I hate—”

“I know,” he says. Then his face softens, just a little. “Would it help if I said I want you to?”

“Do you, though?” she says.

“Well, no,” he says. “But also a bit yes. I know you have to do it.” His hands squeeze at her back, then let her go. “So I’m asking you. Do what you need to do.”

“You’re asking me,” she repeats.

“I am,” he replies.

She looks at him for a moment, then, studying the set of his mouth, the lines around his eyes, looking for any clue that he might be lying. He lets her look, and he isn’t lying at all.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. She puts her hands on his temples, and she thinks of Donna. Thinks of herself—of all the past lives she might have known as intimately as she knows Brown Suit’s life. She thinks of Ada, and of Noor, and she gets to work.

She pulls out memory after memory, everything she just told him, and then she retreats, gently as she can. She holds him upright as he sways, then steadies him until he can stand on his own again.

He focuses on her. Blinks owlishly. “Hello, I… Hold on, what were we talking about? You were saying something. Or I was? Someone was. Something about… was it Donna…?”

No. Thoughts of Donna will lead them right back to where they were, and what good would that do? She needs a distraction.

“Actually, I was just saying that maybe you should rethink your penchant for kissing every woman you happen to meet.” The Doctor manages a smile. Makes it look as genuine as she can. “Just in case one of them turns out to be your future self.”

“Oi, I’m not _that_ bad at kissing, am I?” he says. And he’s mostly joking, but there’s something else there, too. Just a little hint of hurt.

“Well, you were trying to save me from whatever alien force you thought was inside me,” she says, hoping to appease him a little. “So I won’t count that as a proper kiss. At least, I _hope_ that’s not what a proper kiss feels like.”

As soon as she realizes what she said, she wishes she could take it back. Can she? She can pull out the memory and start that sentence over again. Right?

Sure enough, his eyes widen, and he says, “You hope?”

“Figure of speech,” she says quickly.

“Have you not—”

“New body,” she interrupts. “Well, new- _ish._ New enough. Anyway, it hasn’t exactly been a priority, has it? What with—” She stops herself just in time. “What with everything.”

For a second, he just stares at her, and she can practically see him calculating the differences between them. Him, a Doctor who craves closeness and kissing and hand-holding and all sorts of intimacy. Her, a Doctor who keeps herself at arm’s length until everything inside her is so bottled up that she _has_ to let go, like just a moment ago, when they—

No. He doesn’t remember, does he. She took it all away, because the hug, the hair-touching, that little moment of good—it was all so entwined with the story she told him. There was no way to take the story and leave the rest behind.

But what a terrible memory to take away from a person like him.

Which is why she finds herself saying, “No time like the present, though, right? Come on. Try it again. Now that you know who I am.”

Brown Suit’s eyebrows shoot up.

The Doctor grins. “Try it again!”

The arc of emotions across his face is a truly astonishing thing to watch. Surprise-bewilderment-suspicion-hope-excitement, plus a thousand more between them, all in lightning-quick succession. A little laugh escapes him, and he moves closer to her.

This time, when he cups her face in his hands, she’s ready. And when he brushes his thumbs lightly over her temples, she smiles. And when he leans in and kisses her, this time, she kisses him back.

It’s still more than a bit weird, kissing a man who is actually herself. But then, kissing a man at all is also weird. Kissing _anyone_ is weird. It still doesn’t feel like the result of a natural impulse, like it did back when she was him—but once she finds the rhythm of it, she begins to understand the appeal. Or maybe remember the appeal.

One of those.

They kiss, and they kiss, and it’s soft and strange and gentle and utterly impossible. He strokes her hair again; she strokes his in turn, which makes him laugh. And when they break apart, he aims that infectious grin at her and says, “Oh, I’m going to _like_ being you.”

“You will,” she says, grinning back. “I am.”

“And can I ask,” he says, suddenly awkward. Her gut churns; is she going to have to take his memories a second time? But after a slight pause, he continues: “Do I find someone again?”

She frowns. Didn’t she _just_ tell him that she got separated from—No. Nope. That was also part of what she had to take from him.

“After Donna,” he clarifies, clearly mistaking her momentary confusion for… well, for a different kind of momentary confusion. “Because I’ve promised that I wouldn’t, that I’m going to be on my own for a while, but…”

“But it’s because you feel like you have to,” she finishes smoothly, remembering. “Not because you actually want to.”

“Yes,” he says, sort of breathless all of a sudden. “Yes, that, yes.”

“Because traveling with you puts them in mortal danger, and none of them are prepared for how much it’ll change them, even if they survive,” she continues.

He nods. “Yes, yes, yes.”

She smiles, sort of sadly. “But if you don’t have them with you, then you’re just alone. And we hate being alone.”

He nods again, and she understands. She understands so much that she hurts with it. How many times did she try to send her fam home? How many times did they insist on staying with her, until finally, at last, on Gallifrey…

“It takes a while, after Donna,” she tells him, thinking of the next face she had after this one. Too much hair, too much chin, and a collection of bow ties that she keeps meaning to dig out again. She thinks, too, of the little red-haired girl that she met right after she changed. “But yes. You find someone new to travel with.”

“Will I…” He licks his lips, and something in the set of his shoulders reminds her again that everything was about Rose, when she was him. She understands the question, even though he can’t seem to finish it.

“You will,” she replies. “You’ll love them all, and you’ll love them all differently. They’re all amazing. You find so many amazing people.”

He breathes out, long and slow, letting her answer sit.

Then, somewhat worriedly, “Do _you_ have anyone?”

“We got separated,” she says; he won’t remember, of course, that it’s the second time she’s told him this. “I was on my way to find them again, and ended up here instead.”

The TARDIS engines whir at this, and the Doctor jumps. “Oh, so you _can_ talk. Cheeky thing. Finally ready to take me where I actually intended to go, then?”

Brown Suit watches the exchange with wide eyes, and laughs when the engines give a whine in response.

“The original plan,” the Doctor says moving over to the console, “was to have this TARDIS take me back to _my_ TARDIS, and then go pick up my mates.” She pats it, fingers running over still-unfamiliar buttons. “She had ideas of her own, though.”

“Suppose I should let you get back to it,” says Brown Suit, running a hand through his hair again. She can see a bit of sorrow blooming behind his eyes—or maybe she just imagines it. Maybe she’s just remembering how it felt to be him. The excitement of meeting someone new was, to him, rivaled only by the sorrow of letting those meetings end.

She had a hard time with endings, back then.

Maybe she does still. She doesn’t know for sure. But she expects she might find out soon enough.

“Yeah,” she agrees, two fingers still lingering on the console of the TARDIS that isn’t hers, as if begging its patience. “We’ve put enough of a strain on her already, the two of us being in the same place for so long. She can hold a bit of a paradox for a little while, but this is already—Well! You know as well as I do, don’t you?”

“That I do,” he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat. “So this is it, then.”

“I think it must be,” she replies.

“It’s been an honor and a pleasure, Doctor,” he says with a smile.

“Likewise,” she says. “Doctor.”

And with one last wave and a swish of his coat that she strongly suspects he embellished just for her benefit… he’s out the door. Gone.

She lets out a long, slow breath as something twists inside her. Time adjusts. The whole thing, the whole conversation between them, hardens into something fixed. This will always have happened, now. She’ll always have kissed him twice; she’ll always have cried over Donna Noble, centuries too late; she’ll always have told him about the Timeless Child, and then made him forget.

The Doctor searches her own memories for a second perspective—for a memory of being him, watching her. But there’s nothing. She doesn’t remember it from his point of view, which means he’s already starting to forget. Or already forgotten.

Did she have to erase everything she told him in order for the other forgetting to happen? Would he have forgotten everything regardless? She’ll never know.

What she does know is that she meant it when she said she would tell her fam about what happened on Gallifrey. Not because they need to know, but because he was right: It’s eating her up inside. And it felt so good to tell him, to share the burden of knowledge, even if just for a second. She needs that. She needs more good.

“No more tricks this time, okay?” she tells the TARDIS.

The engines whir. Good to go. Back to her own ship, back to her fam.

She smiles.

“I’m ready,” she says. “Take me home.”


End file.
